The Sacrament of Letting Go

I was swinging in the park yesterday during my run yesterday. It's true, I went running. And it probably won't happen again for at least a week or two as my quads hurt super bad. That's what I get for working out once every couple months... Anyway, I was looking at this huge mama tree as I was swinging and singing with my ipod and watched a leaf fall to the ground. At first, I just watched it sway back and forth with the wind and the pretty spiral of orange that was the leaf's journey. Then I looked back up at the tree to see the other leaves and they were all gone. I watched this last leaf fall. It was a cool moment to reflect on the loss of that last leaf and the end of a season. Winter is here.

This poem is amazing, by the way...

The Sacrament of Letting Go
by Macrina Wiedekehr

Slowly she celebrated the sacrament of letting go.
First she surrendered her green,
Then the orange, yellow, and red.
Finally she let go of her own brown,
Shedding her last leaf-

She stood empty and silent, stripped bare.
Leaning against the winter sky,
She began her vigil of trust.
Shedding her last leaf,
she watched it journey to the ground.

She stood in silence wearing the colors of emptiness,
her branches wondering, "How do you give shade with so much gone?"

And then the sacrament of waiting began.
The sunrise and the sunset watched with tenderness,
Clothing her with silhouettes that kept her hope alive.
They helped her to understand that her vulnerability,
Her dependence and need,
Her emptiness, her readiness to receive,
Were giving her a new kind of Beauty.

Every morning and every evening,
They stood in silence,
And celebrated together the sacrament of Waiting.

thankful in the midst

The seasons seem to be changing again and I feel as though hard things come around in the winter. I have a hard time thinking of a winter that wasn't tough. The leaves change into glorious colors all vibrant and bright and then they fall leaving everything barren.

As hard as it is, I appreciate the rawness of winter. There are no leaves, less color, gray skies and a season of waiting of anticipating, of advent.

Thanksgiving is next week and though I have an abundance of things to be thankful for, it's hard to be thankful when cancer becomes part of the equation. Walking alongside my Dad as he awaited tests, results and the end result of cancer was and is not an easy path to tread. He is going in for surgery on Monday. My family and the doctors are hoping a surgery will be all that is necessary so please pray with me.
I know I am not ready to even think about where the path might lead. I feel far too young to think about losing my parents. I fear the path ahead but I also have a great hope that a transformation is possible; in the medical outcome and in our relationship. God does his biggest work when we're at our worst and I am holding onto that trust that He will be faithful in the work He has begun. I'm thankful for a lot of things God has done, but I'm hanging onto the gratitude that I'll feel for the work He will do.

a quote from my favorite pastor in Seattle, Richard Dahlstrom,
We think that gratitude is all about remembering the good things God has done for us and giving thanks. Surely this is a piece of gratitude and thanksgiving. If we limit our thanksgiving to recalling the gifts that God has given us, we will miss most of the story, because most of the story is about how God transforms us right in the midst of challenges in this fallen world...
So perhaps this is the year when we'll give thanks, less for what's happening in this present moment (though God knows that there's still plenty of reasons for gratitude if we take even a cursory look around us), and more for what God will do as we collectively walk through these 'very interesting days', as I recently heard them described. I hope and pray that on the far side of these crisis, we who claim to follow Christ will be shaped, liberated, and transformed, so that our lives will overflow with the purity, generosity and joy that is the heart of Jesus.

may we all choose to be thankful in the midst...

oh, the waiting.

"We seem to have focused so much on exuberant beginnings and victorious endings that we've forgotten about the slow, sometimes tortuous, unraveling of God's grace that takes place in the 'middle places'." -Sue Monk Kidd

I like to tell myself that I am a trooper when it comes to these "middle places" but in all actuality I am not, not even in the slightest. I like to think that I live well in the in-between, but I often fast-forward to the "hoorah, everything is good" part. I'll encounter a hard time or pain of some sort, feel its sting momentarily, and then vault myself into the future where everything is better and it doesn't hurt anymore. Voila! right? not really. What I often want and pretend to have are quick-fixes, dustings under the rug, an emotional band-aid. That's how our culture functions, right? Quick fixes, one-stop shops, fast everything, gotta keep moving mentality...there is an urgency to life, and I find myself with an urgency to have everything be okay again.

I forget that it's a journey. It's a process. A slow and tortuous unraveling..it's in that uncertain middle place that God is found. Not just at the finish line, "hoorah, everything is good" part. God isn't in the business of quick fixes, but in the journey, in the waiting. We aren't to dust all our pain under the rug and pretend they never dirtied our floors in the first place, but we are to embrace them. I'm not sure I'm ready to gather the many pieces I've dusted under the rug, but I know they're still there. When I'm ready, I'll gather them up, embrace them and begin that slow and tortuous process of transformation.

There is always a time of celebration after the waiting. We celebrate after nine-months when babies are born, at the end of college for graduations, after cold winter months-we bask in the sunshine's rays and after the waiting I, too, will celebrate.

"Waiting is the in-between time. It calls us to be in this moment, this season, without leaning so far into the future that we tear our roots from the present. When we learn to wait, we experience where we are as what is truly substantial and precious in life. We discover as T.S. Eliot wrote, 'a lifetime burning in every moment'. " -Sue Monk Kidd